The long wait is over: GOP nominee has named JD Vance as his running mate.
In choosing Vance, the junior senator from Ohio who’s a freshman member of Congress, Trump didn’t just pass over some more established candidates, he essentially anointed him as the potential torchbearer for the Republican Party moving forward.
This is even more noteworthy given the very unique circumstances that Trump finds himself in. As he has already served four years in the White House, he is limited to only one more term, per the rules outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
This means that even if Trump were to win election as president come November, he wouldn’t be able to run for re-election in 2028.
That would put Vance, at only 39 years old, in a prime position to make a run for president himself in four years.
As South Dakota Senator John Thune, a powerful Republican who is a leading candidate to lead the GOP in the upper chamber next year, said of Vance:
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here, but he’s got a very bright future, and obviously if we are successful and can serve as vice president, he, I’m sure, will be on a lot of people’s lists … for a long time to come.
“He’s a powerful messenger. Very articulate, and whether you agree with him or not, he … always makes a really good argument, makes his case, and I think he’ll be a ferocious defender of President Trump and his policies.”
That angle certainly wasn’t lost on Trump, who said that when he was making his choice for running mate, he wasn’t just focused on winning the election in November, but also on setting the GOP trajectory well into the future.
That could be a major reason why he passed on other potential candidates such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio — who Trump’s base has often criticized — or North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum — who doesn’t elicit a lot of excitement from the Trump base.
As Republican Representative Jim Banks of Indiana commented:
“Donald Trump, I think, is thinking these days a lot about the future, and the future is JD Vance. … I think that’s what it comes down to: He represents the future of the party and the movement.”
Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate marks a meteoric, out-of-nowhere rise for the Ohio senator who only two years ago wasn’t even a politician.
Vance first considered a run for Senate in 2018 but decided against challenging Democrat Sherrod Brown,
In 2021, though, a $10 million donation was given by Peter Theil to a super PAC called Protect Ohio Values, which was created just one month before to support Vance’s potential candidacy.
It took another five months for Vance to officially throw his hat in the ring for the Senate seat that was being vacated by Rob Portman. While he was initially considered a long-shot, an endorsement from Trump helped vault him to the top of the GOP ticket and, eventually, beating Democrat Tim Ryan in the 2022 midterm election by a 53%-to-47% margin.
Naturally, Vance has been an ardent Trump supporter ever since, though it wasn’t always that way. He was a one-time critic of Trump, actually, but he’s been pushing an America First agenda ever since getting elected to the Senate.
